Beachside Murder (A Team Gossip Cozy Mystery Book 1) Read online

  “And he always needed more money,” Aunt Agnes said. “He spent everything that came his way and more. He juggled several credit cards, didn’t he?”

  “And his pockets were always empty,” Ivy said.

  “But he was very nice and friendly as a toddler,” Aunt Etta said.

  “And he turned into the most insufferable 10-year-old brat imaginable,” Aunt Agnes said with her slightly petulant Miss Perfect voice. “And then he turned into an up-and-coming petty thief. His tastes were too expensive for his income, and he didn’t think twice before shoplifting or stealing from his family’s wallets.”

  “And don’t forget about the drugs,” Ivy said. “He may have stopped, but those things always leave a permanent trace.”

  “Everyone felt relieved on the day he finally left the town,” Flora said.

  They kept going and mentioned all the rumors and stories about Phillip. One of the girls in town had had a baby and she’d claimed that it was his. Everyone believed her, but he denied it and managed to dodge all responsibility. He was irresponsible and selfish, and he only cared about his own ego. He ignored the girl and the baby, and she was forced to raise the child on her own. She was very brave, but he hadn’t been responsible enough.

  My aunt and her friends considered him guilty. I didn’t know him enough to make my mind about it, but if he’d killed Parrish, then he deserved to go to prison and pay for everything he’d done. I wanted the police to find the culprit, and I wanted them to do so soon. The Sand & Sea needed Greensea to become the quiet touristic place it had always been.

  In the meantime, my aunt and her friends wanted to solve the crime themselves to get a virtual badge of honor for their gossiping careers.

  “We can help your nephew find the murderer,” Flora offered Aunt Etta. “The captain won’t object, will he?”

  “Nathaniel will never let us help him,” Aunt Etta said. “If we work on the case, we’ll be on our own.”

  “We’ll be like spies!” Ivy clapped her hands excitedly. “Do we get a reward for catching a criminal?”

  “I don’t think so,” Aunt Agnes said.

  “We can always abduct the murderer and ask for a ransom.” Ivy laughed with her signature laugh. “We’d be serving the community while earning some money.”

  “No, we can’t abduct anyone,” Flora said.

  “We’re too old to go to jail!” Ivy said. “If someone catches us, they’ll slap our wrists and tell us not to do it again, that’s all.” She laughed so uncontrollably that everyone realized that she was joking. At least she was joking now. Sometimes, Ivy’s suggestions got scary.

  The others laughed and I finally relaxed and focused on driving.

  Ivy used my distraction to open the glove compartment and pull out my car insurance documents. She handed some to the others and I didn’t react on time to snatch them back.

  “You’re paying too much for your car insurance,” Aunt Agnes said. “Have you phoned the insurance company to get a discount?”

  “I can call for you if you like,” Ivy said. “I’ll charge 20% of whatever you save. You can pay in chocolate cookies.”

  “She’s family!” Flora said. “You can’t charge her!”

  “Of course I can,” Ivy said. “If I can’t buy chocolates when I’m shopping, I have to get them elsewhere, don’t I?”

  “I don’t need a discount,” I said. “I’m not paying that much.”

  “Whatever you save, you can invest it in inviting my nephew to dinner,” Aunt Etta said. “You two are young and half-broke, and you need every cent you can save.”

  “She can’t invite Nathaniel,” Aunt Agnes said. “He’s supposed to invite her.”

  “That’s so old-fashioned!” Ivy said.

  “And very sexist,” Flora said. “What kind of education are you giving your niece?”

  “He’s too insecure to let a woman invite him,” Aunt Agnes explained. “There’s no sexism in this, just knowing the lad.”

  “My nephew isn’t insecure,” Aunt Etta said. “Maybe your niece is being too forward.”

  Ivy and Flora laughed loudly.

  “Meghan? Forward?” Aunt Agnes sounded shocked.

  Okay, this was too much. I wasn’t going to drive them anywhere ever again. Never, ever, ever. They were toxic and very dangerous. No wonder that so many families dump their elders in retirement homes: it’s a way to stop them from taking over the world. If Team Gossip got bored, they’d soon take over Greensea. Corton and Florida would be next.

  Chapter 26

  “I’m slightly worried,” Brittany told me. She’d noticed me in the lobby, and she’d come to chat. She didn’t seem to remember that she’d stolen my cheating boyfriend from me.

  As if I cared about someone’s worry. She was a customer like any other and I had to remain professional. I no longer cared about Vincent, but what could I think about someone who had agreed to date him? She’d done it right after her fiancé had been killed; it was difficult to stomach.

  But I was still grateful towards her. She’d opened my eyes regarding Vincent. He was a cheating worm devoid of any principles whatsoever. Now that I saw him accurately, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Brittany’s lack of restraint in amorous matters had actually helped me. It’s tragic to be happy about catching your boyfriend cheating on you. It’s worse if he cheats and you don’t catch him, isn’t it?

  She told me about the safe in her room, and that Parrish and she had saved his will there. Parrish had named her his heir about a month before, and he was giving her all his money, his businesses, and the rest of his belongings. He wasn’t leaving them to his wife, but to Brittany Merritt explicitly, whether or not she was his wife.

  “When I saw the empty safe,” she continued, “I was scared because the will had disappeared.”

  That was sooo horrible! She hadn’t even mourned her fiancé for a week, and now she was scared that she might not receive his fortune. I should’ve rejoiced and called it Karma. Why did I feel sympathy towards her? I should’ve smiled and told her that she’d have to start catching another fortune from scratch.

  Brittany’s legal advisors weren’t too worried about the will’s disappearance. They’d witnessed and advised Parrish while he wrote and signed the will, and they knew of a second copy that Parrish kept elsewhere. She was his unquestionable heiress.

  And, to help her cope with her mourning and her disappointment with Vincent, she’d bought designer clothes, jewelry, Italian shoes, and just about everything that she hadn’t been able to afford before catching Parrish. She showed me a couple of rings with a large emerald and a ruby, and she wore a necklace with more diamonds than I’d seen in a very long time. Team Gossip was going to love her new attitude: she didn’t even hide her gold digging ambitions.

  Was this a believable motive? Nathan needed to know. Brittany didn’t seem guilty at first, but nobody spends someone’s fortune right after he’s been poisoned.

  Chapter 27

  “And you aren’t resentful against her, are you?” Nathan chuckled on the other end of the line. I’d called him almost immediately after seeing Brittany, and he wasn’t going to waste his chance to tease me.

  “Are you jealous because I dated Vincent?” I asked.

  “Me? Jealous?” He sounded surprised. Exaggeratedly surprised. “And why should I be jealous that you dated a cheating worm? He had nothing to do with me.” He ended the sentence with a hint of resentment in his voice.

  “You’re jealous,” I sang to tease him. “You’re really, really, really jealous. And you would’ve wanted to date me.” I didn’t know where I was getting the courage to tease Nathan, but I liked it. I’d missed him for too long.

  “Shut up,” he said. He tried to sound annoyed, but he wasn’t. “What are you doing after lunch?”

  “Not much,” I said. “The Sand & Sea is as empty as usual, and I don’t want to spend the afternoon staring at the walls and hoping that someone comes in.”


  “Pizzas like in good old times?”

  “Pizzas? After lunch?” I asked. “How old are you? Thirteen?”

  “Are you declining pizza? I’ll add extra cheese.”

  Okay, I’ll acknowledge it. I liked pizza, but did anyone over the age of 15 eat pizza after lunch? Still, I hadn’t eaten pizza in a while, and nobody forced me to eat before my second lunch with Nathan.

  “Your place or mine?”

  Nathan started laughing uncontrollably. “We can jump straight to desserts if you’re so desperate.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Let’s eat pizzas at my house so that your aunt doesn’t spy on us.”

  If Aunt Etta saw me in her house, she’d summon Team Gossip so that we didn’t have a second of privacy. They were excited with the prospect that Nathan and I could end up dating. We were just close friends for now and we didn’t need the social pressure to become anything else. Don’t take me wrong: I liked Nathan, but it had been a long time since we’d been anything. I’d just broken up with Vincent, and I didn’t need any other disappointments.

  Nathan was probably uninterested in relationships too. We both seemed happy with our lives for the time being.

  “Lucky that you don’t have any relatives spying on you,” he said. “I’ll take care of the drinks.”

  The phone clicked abruptly. His pleasant and smooth way of hanging up always shocked me.

  My house was very large and comfortable for me, so we’d be fine there. The house belonged to my parents, but they’d let me live there now that they’d moved to New York. My dad owned an import business: he bought olives from Europe, turned them into the highest-quality olive oil, and sold it here. He always said that foreign olives had a special flavor, and his customers agreed. Now that his sales volume had increased dramatically, they’d moved to New York to be closer to the warehouses. They were now expanding their business to Canada and some of Mexico, and they were too busy to come back to Greensea. Their Manhattan attic was a dream, and they no longer needed the house I’d spent the summers in.

  Chapter 28

  Nathan and I had eaten some pizzas and we’d gone to my garden to have coffee. Everything had been quiet at first, so we’d assumed that Team Gossip hadn’t been there.

  “You need to build a higher fence.” Nathan stared in the direction of my neighbors’ gardens.

  It had been a trap.

  “You’re having a date!” Flora shouted from her garden. “How can you think about fences?”

  “You shouldn’t be taking your eyes away from her,” Aunt Etta nagged at him.

  “Or your hands,” Ivy teased.

  “Ivy!” The others complained.

  “What?” she said. “They’re young. It’s what young people do. I’m young enough to remember. Can’t you?” She laughed with her characteristic laugh, and the others joined her.

  They quickly returned to talking about us as if we weren’t there and they knew exactly what to do with our lives.

  “Right now, Nathaniel should be looking for a serious relationship,” Ivy said. “He’s no longer a hormone-driven teen, and he should start looking for a mother for his children.”

  “I’d say he likes her,” Aunt Etta said. “He asked about Meghan the very first minute he entered my house.”

  “And he’s always running onto her,” Flora added. “And she’s always trying to bump onto him.”

  Aunt Agnes sighed. “Ah, young hearts always follow sinuous paths instead of going for the obvious straight line.”

  “If they don’t start showing their feelings for each other,” Flora said, “they’ll end up bored of chasing after one another.”

  “But neither wants to take the lead,” Aunt Etta said. “They just eat together, that’s all.”

  “That’s the modern world for you,” Flora said. “Too much fear of being a feminist or the opposite. Young people never know what to do in case they break politically correct rules.”

  Ivy started singing the crab’s kissing song from The Little Mermaid, and the others hushed her quickly.

  “You’ll scare them away,” Flora said.

  “They need to think that they’re following their own impulses.” Aunt Agnes used her petulant Miss Perfect tone.

  “And the song’s protected by copyright laws,” Aunt Etta said.

  Nathan looked down and took a deep breath. He looked at me with an apologetic expression, as if regretting that he lived with his aunt and we hadn’t been able to escape from them.

  I didn’t need privacy, but I wanted to have some time with an old friend. Nathan and I had had a long story together. We’d been friends, best friends, lovers, and now we were old friends who’d finally found each other again. We’d both lived more and we’d been burnt out with problems from the adult world. Looking into his eyes sometimes reminded me of life without complications, without the concerns that only grown-ups can see.

  Looking at him was like looking at Neverland, at children’s stories. We’d both become productive adults, we’d known heartbreak, we’d had relationships and disappointments, and we’d devoted too much time to our jobs. But there was a hint of something special in his eyes, a hint of hope. When I saw his eyes shine with that special glow, I wondered, Can we have our own love story?

  I quickly stopped thinking about it. Nathan was a friend, and I was living a personal and professional crisis: Pops’ restaurant was going downhill, and I’d broken up with Vincent. Did I really have the time to think about men?

  “We won’t be able to have coffee today.” Nathan’s words brought me back to reality. “We have an audience.”

  “No,” Ivy shouted from her garden. “You can have coffee. You just can’t get romantic. Keep it PG-13, and you’re free to do whatever you like.”

  “And don’t be shy about anything,” Flora said. “We won’t say a word.”

  “Strictly confidential and limited to the intimacy of your garden,” Aunt Agnes said.

  “This is destiny finally catching up with you two,” Flora said.

  “About time,” Ivy added.

  Lord James, their tiny white dog, barked in agreement. Ivy congratulated him, gave him a treat, and started chatting with him.

  This wasn’t destiny; this was our past coming back to haunt us.

  I’d had a serious crush on Nathan for many years. He’d gone to college and I’d expected him to return like always. Instead, he’d brought a tall and gorgeous blonde with him. And now he was there, in front of me, and we could have a second chance.

  No, no, no. I didn’t want first, second, or third chances with anyone. I was tired of dating, tired of disappointments, and definitely tired of worrying about whether someone was interested in me.

  And yet Nathan was seated in front of me, staring at my eyes.

  No, no, no. Don’t flutter your eyelashes at him. Okay, you’ve fluttered your eyelashes, but don’t smile at him. Don’t― Too late.

  I grinned at him like an idiot.

  What are you thinking? You’ve just broken up with Vincent!

  I didn’t know why my brain kept nagging at me not to try anything with Nathan. He was nice, I’d known him for years, and he didn’t cheat on his girlfriends. Not to mention that he was handsome.

  Still, I was reluctant to try anything with him if I ran the risk of losing him as a friend too.

  Not that I thought of him along those lines…

  Really?

  Hey, he’d been my crush for ages, and we’d met again. What if Cupid had been drunk back then and now he’d gone to rehab? And why did I have to convince myself of anything? I didn’t need to argue with myself.

  Agreed. You need help. Professional help.

  Ugh. Why did I always trail off whenever I was with Nathan? I already had Team Gossip to annoy me; they didn’t need any help. And I was already good enough at spoiling my relationships with men; I didn’t need to try any harder.

  Chapter 29

  Team Gossip approached us after coffee. They�
��d been investigating on their own and they were starting to enjoy it. Nathan wasn’t too happy about it; it meant that they’d try to steal more information from the police station.

  They’d managed to get Brittany to tell them about the safe and about Parrish’s will. She thought that Vincent had been to their room after someone had broken in, and that he’d probably taken the will to keep it safe. She expected him to contact her to start with the inheritance paperwork. Her legal team ―a group of sharks― had a second copy, so she could start the paperwork anyway.

  Flora used her previous relationship with Parrish to talk about his family. Parrish’s nephew Phillip had always spent too much. He was arrogant, incompetent, and lacked morals. They were glad that Brittany had blinded Parrish enough to get his fortune, because Phillip would’ve spent it within a year.

  Team Gossip had learned details about the case before Nathan and his colleagues. He admired them, but he didn’t want to thank them. Thanking them would only feed their investigative urges. They were unstoppable, and they were becoming scarier each day.

  Their recent findings had placed Brittany under the spotlight, and Nathan was going to interrogate her the following day.

  Aunts Etta and Agnes, and Ivy and Flora were kind and caring old ladies whenever they were on their own. They rarely gossiped or criticized anyone, and they never became adventurous. Whenever they got together, they transformed. Jekyll and Hyde didn’t change as much as our adorable elderly neighbors.

  Chapter 30

  “Aren’t you ashamed of giving false hopes to my nephew while you spend your days looking for your mystery jogger?” Aunt Etta sat on a chair beside me while I was having some coffee for breakfast.

  The other three joined us, equally uninvited. Flora had brought Lord James with her and placed him on her lap.

  I hadn’t gone there to see my mystery jogger. I’d wanted to have something for breakfast, and the Sand & Sea only reminded me of everything that was going downhill. Our employees’ moods were also affected, starting with our diva chef. Antoine was grumpier than ever and wanted fame as well as money. Pops was trying too hard to keep the resort afloat, and he was staying in his office until late, so I rarely saw him. April was always dodging Derek because she didn’t want to babysit him, and she wanted me to assign him to help Antoine. The moods of some of our regulars weren’t as cheerful as usual, and they sometimes had dinner elsewhere. Not to mention that we were trying our best to keep suspects happy and entertained at the hotel, but nobody wanted to remember what had happened.